Current weather

UGA Extension seeks public's help to celebrate centennial

University of Georgia Extension invites Georgians to help celebrate 100 years of working together to build a better Georgia by chronicling their Extension stories.

The history of UGA Extension is comprised of thousands of stories of Georgians who spent their youth at 4-H summer camps, organized home demonstration clubs or relied on their local county agent for canning, gardening or farming advice. As it celebrates its official centennial, the organization wants to hear and share these stories.

Anyone who feels UGA Extension has affected their life should visit 100years.extension.uga.edu and submit their story in the online form. Selected stories will be compiled as part of this historical website celebrating the Georgia Extension’s centennial.

The dynamic website will share the history of UGA Extension through articles, historic photographs, videos, timelines and personal anecdotes. It will be available to help the public explore the history of UGA Extension and the impact it’s had on the state’s history.

For the 100years.extension.uga.edu website, UGA Extension is looking for both specific anecdotes about personal involvement with UGA Extension and general impressions of the organization’s impact on the state. The stories can be funny, heartfelt, personal or general.

It may also be fun for children to interview their parents or grandparents to elicit stories and memories from their younger years. Those stories can be written down and later entered into the 100years.extension.uga.edu website.

UGA Extension was founded in 1914 through the Smith-Lever Act, a federal law that established and funded a state-by-state national network of educators to bring university-based research and practical knowledge to the public.

Today, Extension in Georgia is a cooperative effort by federal, state and local government partners administered by UGA and known as UGA Extension.

For more information about UGA Extension, see extension.uga.edu or call 1-800-Ask-UGA1.

Merritt Melancon is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.